Tryon County, North Carolina Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, 1769-1779

The single most important record for any North Carolina county is the minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions. The court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions is the lowest court of record for the county. It was where the business of the county was carried on. As the title of the court suggests, the court met four times a year, or quarterly. From a genealogical point of view, the names of more people will appear in this court record than in any other body of county records. In fact, the only place where some names will be found is within such court minutes. Lists of deeds proved and recorded are found in the court minutes, as well as lists of wills proved or administrations on intestate estates taken out. The construction of roads and the road juries (sometimes called road gangs) who were to lay out and maintain the roads are spelled out in these records. Civil suits involving less than $150 (usually over debt), minor criminal cases, depositions, jury lists, tax officials’ names with their districts, tavern licenses and tavern rates, and care of the poor of the county are among the many kinds of records included in the court minutes. The records in this volume were extracted from the microfilm copy (produced by the North Carolina Department of Archives and History) of the Tryon County Court Minutes (C.094.30001).

Tryon County was abolished in 1779 to form Lincoln and Rutherford Counties. Of the four counties involved in the North Carolina-South Carolina border problem in the colonial period (Tryon, Mecklenburg, Anson, and Bladen), Tryon County is the only one which has extant court minutes for the period prior to the border surveys of 1772.

A map of Tryon County at the time of its formation, a map of North Carolina in 1775, a full-name index, and a place name index add to the value of this work.